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Can Cooperative Businesses Save Communities?

This article highlights the work being facilitated by The Democracy Collaborative across the United States to help incubate cooperative business and change city economies from the ground up:

The number of worker co-operatives in the United States has been growing for two decades, according to the Democracy at Work Institute, and employee-ownership advocacy organizations such as the Democracy Collaborative and the Surdna Foundation report surging interest since the financial crisis.

The Democracy Collaborative in particular has been at the forefront of a new model for Rust Belt cities struggling with growing poverty and unemployment, called the Cleveland Model from the city where it was first put into practice. The result, called the Evergreen Cooperative Initiative, was launched in 2008. Evergreen partnered with local educational, healthcare, and charitable organizations to start worker co-ops to provide some of the millions of dollars worth of goods and services they need every year... Read full article.